Art Becomes You
June 2026Art becomes you.
The way your fingers spontaneously drum on the steering wheel while a Mozart symphony plays on the radio. The unexpected lyricism of a line in a novel that causes you to pause and reread. The familiar loops of a handwritten note left on the counter. How you carry the notes of a familiar piece with you, tied to the rhythm of your footsteps on the pavement.
Art is more than what you do; it’s a way of being.
It imbues the way you think and feel, listen and see; what you pay attention to and what captures your attention. It expands your awareness, colors your perspective, and provides a lens for self-reflection.
“What made the composer decide to write it this way?” I asked in a lesson earlier this week. “What’s the character of the opening vs. the middle section? What does this harmonic change mean?”
We were working on Barbara Arens’ Prelude IX in D minor. Marked by a chromatic descending bass line (symbolizing sadness and grief), a persistent return to A (what do we keep coming back to and why is it so hard to let it go?), a deceptive cadence (an unexpected turn), sequences (returning to something familiar, but something has changed), and a G major (IV) chord near the end (something foreign and unexpected that causes us to question what we thought we knew).
Suddenly, I found pieces of myself in the music—my story, uncertainties, continuance, and quiet thoughts reflected back to me from the page.
Art stirs a curiosity in us about how something is made and what the creator was thinking or trying to express. I wondered: Did she struggle with the form or choosing a key? How many melodic shapes did she explore before settling on this one? Did she know how it would end when she started?
This makes me think of an interview with Ann Patchett I listened to over the weekend (I can’t wait to read her new book after hearing so many people talk about it—have you read it?). It was fascinating to hear her talk about the fluidity of her writing process, how she approaches the storyline and character development, and the thousands of questions she asks herself along the way.
Sometimes, it’s impossible to know where you’ll end up; you just have to find a way to start. Stay curious about the process and what it can teach you. Pay attention to how it unfolds. One line leads to the next, and maybe in the end, that’s how we find ourselves.
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